This invention relates to a method for picking up and handling filled and sealed, rectangular bags or film packs, also known as pouches, which have a bottom side provided with a bottom fold and two longitudinal sides. In the sense of the present invention the term “handling” relates to any random conveying, supplying, transferring, sorting, intermediate storing, etc.
The invention is in the field of the manufacture and further processing of pouches filled with (animal foods. The previously manufactured tubular pouches are filled in special filling and sealing mechanisms with an ingredient or component and are then closed and sealed and subsequently usually undergo a sterilization before the finished products are packed.
Since it has proved advantageous for various reasons for the pouches to stand during sterilization on one of the longer lateral edges or longitudinal sides, i.e., with a main extension plane containing the pouch lateral edges being substantially vertical and the longer lateral edges substantially horizontal, the problem arises of simultaneously reliably mechanically gripping or picking up a plurality of parallel pouches arranged in a row, in order to hold the pouches or perform a handling movement therewith.